The pew was unoccupied, and Jeffard went deep into it, meaning to be well out of the way of later comers. But when the finale of the voluntary merged by harmonious transpositions into the key of the opening hymn, the other sittings in the pew were still untaken, and Jeffard congratulated himself. There be times when partial isolation, even in a sparsely filled church, is grateful; and the furrows in the fallow field were still smoking from their recent upturning. Jeffard stood in the hymn-singing, and bowed his head at the prayer, not so much in reverence as in deference to time, place, and encompassments. Since the shearing of the plowshare filled his ears, the words of the beseeching were lost to him, but he was sufficiently alive to his surroundings to know that the pew filled quietly at the beginning of the prayer; and sufficiently reserved afterward to deny himself so much as a glance aside at his nearest neighbor. How long he would have sat staring abstractedly at the pictured window beyond the choir must remain a matter for conjecture. The minister had given out the psalm, and Jeffard stood up with the others. Whereupon he saw of necessity that his neighbor was a woman, so small that the trimmings on her modest walking hat came barely to his shoulder; saw this, and a moment later was looking down into a pair of steadfast gray eyes, deep-welled and eloquent, as she handed him an open book with the leaf turned down. He took the book mechanically, with mute thanks, but afterward he saw and heard nothing for which the evensong in St. Cyril's-in-the-Desert could justly be held responsible, being lifted to a seventh heaven of ecstasy far more real than that depicted in the glowing periods of the preacher. He made the most of it, knowing that it would presently vanish, and that he should have to come to earth again. And not by whispered word or sign of recognition would he mar the beatitude of it. Only once, when he put aside the book she had given him and looked on with her, did he suffer himself to do more than to enjoy silently and to the full the sweet pleasure of her nearness. Under the circumstances it was not singular that his by-glancings did not go beyond her; and that Dick Bartrow's hearty handclasp and stage-whisper greeting at the close of the service should take him by surprise. This he endured as one in a dream; also the introduction to a radiant young woman with whom Bartrow presently led the way into the stream of decorously jostling outgoers pouring down the great aisle. That left Jeffard to follow with the small one; and he was still groping his way through the speechless ravishment of it when they overtook the Bartrows on the sidewalk. Dick promptly broke the spell.